Nutritional Status of Female Children in Comparison to Their Male Siblings in India– A Secondary Analysis of National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) Data

Introduction: As there was little literature available about gender disparities in undernutrition within household, this secondary analysis was performed on a large representative data with an objective to evaluate the Z-score differences, viz., Weight-for-age Z-score (WAZ), Height-for-age Z-score (HAZ), Weight-for-height Z-score (WHZ) and BMI-for-age Z-score (BAZ) of the Indian female under-5 children with their male siblings within same household. Methods: Individual data of 19083 pairs of siblings was analysed from the NFHS -5 data. Differences in the Z-scores of the siblings was calculated as male’s Z-score minus female’s Z-score and factors influencing them were studied. Results: The mean HAZ and WAZ scores were less than -1.4 Standard deviations (SD) for both genders – while the means of WHZ and BAZ scores were ranging between -0.67 to -0.83. The differences in Z scores were more or less distributed equally on both sides of zero, implying no disadvantage to any of the genders. The mean differences in the Z scores were minimal (-0.07 in HAZ, -0.04 in WAZ, -0.06 in WHZ and 0.01 in BAZ). Conclusion: There was little or no difference in the mean z scores of females and male siblings and did not indicate any gender advantage or disadvantage.